Original officially hijacked

The question on everyone in the Communities lips: Is the MPAA trying to take over Popcorn Time? Questions and worries have spread on the web, a community statement is long overdue.

Popcorntime.io & The Death

A disagreement about popcorntime.io money and power combined with a lawsuit from Hollywood broke up the team behind the most popular Popcorn Time application a long time ago. There are a number of Popcorn Time forks, which all in some way "replaced" or were "reincarnations" of the original. None of the them could be labelled "official successors", because they weren't necessarily run by the same people. Presumably they have some sort of financial gain from doing this, or perhaps they just want the fame.

Popcorntime.sh & The MPAA Honeypot Department

Setting up a fake fork, labeling it as official and compensating copyright owners with piracy cash seems entirely possible. The popcorntime.sh nameservers are owned and controlled by the MPAA. The entire popcorntime.io infrastructure was busted by the MPAA last year on October. If the MPAA seized these people's assets (.io domain, twitter, github and the /r/popcorntime subreddit), then it's perfectly plausible that they seized their private keys as well.

/r/PopcornTime/ Subreddit & Its Malware Forks Part I

Softpedia says: "There are a ton of Popcorn Time forks right now, and many of them come with various malware and adware, at best", but notably, it specifically points to forks being promoted by the /r/PopcornTime/ Subreddit.

Popcorntime.ws and popcorntimece.ch both contain malware and should be avoided! It seems the same people are behind both websites and that they also run the reddit page formerly associated with the official Popcorn Time (reddit.com/r/PopcornTime).

/r/PopcornTime/ Subreddit & Its Malware Forks - Part II

Popcorntime.sh currently sits at number four in a google search for “popcorn time” and how it got there is a mystery. It looks a lot like the other Popcorn Time websites and on the surface it seems like their version of Popcorn Time could be just as good as the next one. The Symantec Antivirus Software detected a Sape.Heur Virus packaged with the windows installer. This virus threatens your computer privacy, but surprisingly it is reported as "very low". However, looking a bit in to what’s going on with that virus it’s evident you should stay clear of it.

There are many versions out there and not all of them has your best interest in mind. Here is a diagram that has been circulating on Reddit and attempts to put the current mess into an easy to understand format. It might help you navigate in the PT jungle out there.

The bottom line is that you wan to stay far away from popcorntime.sh!
If you feel like helping out you can report it to Google here. The more people report it the faster it’s going to be taken off Google search results.